God and atheism and loose rocks.

I hopped the rail and sat against the dirt wall below the highway. The face of a mountain stared at me from across a small valley. It was high and snow-capped. I took off my sweatshirt and faced it. The sun hit my face and ran through it like chemicals. Down in the valley a thin stream ran beneath the tall trees and loose rocks, which tumbled down the sides like tears. I sat there and stared at all of it. My face and arms were hot with blood. I was back with life. Birds would land and take off again from the limbs down there. I sunk my hand into the warm dirt and let it fall through my fingers. I missed the road, the dangerousness of no routine. I sat back and thought about everything. I wondered what Helena was doing, and if I still crossed her mind. I wondered if my mother could see me from where she was, and I wondered what she thought of me. I wondered if there were mountains in Heaven. I knew there had to be a Heaven because she was dead and I couldn’t stand the thought of her rotting in a coffin with nothing else for her. I wanted a Heaven to exist for her. For me it didn’t matter. I believed in no afterlife, and I believed that man may never know how the first form of life began, but that was where the beauty of life came from, from that mystery. The biblical God to me was a joke, the words were a joke, but I considered God to be everything that I knew nothing about, a feeling, the source of love I felt concerning good and evil. To have told her that God to me was another word for the unknown would have broken her heart, so I watched the bright leaves and let them rest onto the idea of her up high, to shine beneath her soul. I sat there and remembered her, then my thoughts trailed back to the warm air, and how much time I’d spent away from it. A cloud passed and blocked the sun. I stood up and put my sweatshirt on.